


Submerge

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, Post-The Truth, RST, on-the-run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 13:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: Thanks to Admiralty for the beta!





	Submerge

The night was hot, stiflingly, oppressively so. The air so still it could have been the vacuum of space, if not for the crushing humidity. They slept in the tent only to keep the mosquitoes at bay and had long since kicked their joined sleeping bag down to their feet.

She wore nothing but a light tank top and a pair of panties, the rest of their clothes and gear stashed in a trail backpack on the other side of their campsite. There was not another soul around for miles.

They had made love as twilight descended, and even now, hours later, she couldn’t bring her temperature down enough to sleep.

She looked once again up through the tent’s netting toward the gush of stars above, the smattering of dark sky in between the pinpricks of light more purple than black. She felt small and helpless under the endless firmament, easily crushed beneath the massive dome of the heavens.

She unzipped the tent flap slowly, trying not to wake Mulder, who was dozing lightly beside her, a fine sheen of sweat still over his chest and face. His mouth was loose in unconsciousness, his lips slightly puckered and soft.

She felt a pang of affection for him as she slowly crawled out of the tent and onto the soft ground, mealy under her bare feet with sand, the broken bits of leaves, brittle pine needles.

They were camped on a steep wooded rise, just to the north of the languorous, mammoth dunes of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. They took the risk of staying on government land with the knowledge of few visitors this time of year and the egregious lack of funding afforded the NPS. They were moving north slowly, flirting with an as-yet unspoken idea of possibly crossing the border into Canada.

They had been on the road months and felt the shackles of pursuit loosening with each week and mile they moved away from New Mexico, the grip of fear dissipating like the gritty ozone haze of blasted magnetite they’d left behind.

She stretched, the hint of a breeze teasing her momentarily bared midsection and she looked to the lake beyond the dunes, hoping for a cooling zephyr, anything to move the sticky night air.

A Navy brat, she’d always felt the pull of big water, the sea awash in iron, her heart a magnet. Her feet started moving toward it of their own volition.

She made her way gingerly down the steep grade of the dunes, picking her way around sharp dune grass, sand-submerged rocks and sticks to the vast beach below.

The water’s edge was a till of sand and stones, all rounded and polished in the harrow of the waves. She stood before it and let her feet sink into the grit, staring off into the dark of the water and the night.

There was an iron ore freighter, lights blinking in the distance, making its way slowly north, miles and miles off shore, the only other humans within the scope of the horizon.

She took a step into the lake, still and vast, submerged herself to her ankles, the arctic slap on her skin harkening to the melting glacier from which the water came. Her nipples tightened as the chill moved up her body, and she was seized with the goose bump sensation of her milk letting down, the ghost of a feeling she hadn’t felt since the real thing; the last morning she nursed William, the day she gave him away.

The realization pulled her further into the water, quickly to her knees and waist, and she let herself fall forward, sinking into the lake, letting the cold ease the phantom pressure she felt in her breasts.

She was hit with a wave of exhaustion, not just physical but emotional too, a bone-clutching weariness that went so deep it seemed to go right through her. She was tired of running.

She flipped over onto her back and let the lake support her, floating freely, her body finally, finally cooling off. The water lapped gently around her, easing in and out of her ears lending the quiet sounds of night an intermittent muffled quality that had an amniotic effect that calmed and eased her mind.

After a while the chill creeped past her skin and into her muscles, and she felt she might finally be able to sleep. She emerged from the water like a selkie, and was surprised to find Mulder waiting for her, sitting atop a large piece of driftwood, still and quiet.

She sat beside him without speaking, bumping a wet shoulder companionably into his, and he returned the gesture, tucked a wet strand of hair gently behind her ear.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he finally asked.

“Too hot,” she said, and he nodded, his dark hair blending into the night. It was getting shaggy and long, curling along his forehead and around his ears and neck. It was silky and fine--like William’s had been--and she flexed her fingers at the memory.

They looked out over the water in silence, the freighter fading from sight behind one of the Manitou Islands to the north. 

“’The lake it is said, never gives up her dead,’” Mulder finally said, quoting the old Gordon Lightfoot song.

“He was singing about Lake Superior, wasn’t he?”

Mulder shrugged.“Wonder if it’s true,” he said.

She looked out over the dark inland sea, cold water dripping from her hair onto her shoulders. She thought of some of the bodies she’d autopsied that had spent time in the water. Not her favorite.

“I believe Lake Superior is cold enough to retard the growth of bacteria,” she said, “it would impede cellular breakdown--wouldn’t create gas. The bodies would sink, rather than float.”

“So it is true,” he said.

She shrugged, mirroring his earlier gesture.

The water continued to drip from her hair, from her shirt, down her legs and silently into the sand, keeping time.

“I’m tired, Mulder,” she said, finally turning to look into his eyes as she spoke. She needed more than sleep. She needed to settle down, to heal. She needed to stop running.

“Me too,” he said, the rasp in his voice telling her everything she needed to know, telling her he needed all of those things, too.

She hooked her pinkie through his, sawed the air in between them and they both rose, fingers still linked. They made slow progress back up the dune, through the trees that stood between the path and their campsite.

A breeze picked up from the lake then finally, lifting the hair off of Mulder’s forehead as he stood in front of her near the entrance to their small tent. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, the look on his face one of relief.

She peeled the wet tank top up and over her head, tossing it over a nearby branch to dry.

Mulder’s eyes were back on her, lazily roving over her form.

“So,” he said, leaning down to take slow nips at her lips, “should we go to bed?” _Kiss_ . “Or to sleep?” _Kiss_.

She leaned into him, his hot skin feeling wonderful against her own, still chilled from her swim.

“To bed, I think,” she said, as his lips moved slowly down her neck, licking the water away like a cat.

They lay down in the tent and sunk, easing, water-like into each other, bemired in one another, finding peace, finding relief. It was a benediction, a promise.

Later, sleep took them both as the cool mistral picked up faster off the water, buffeting the sides of their tent, easing them into dreamland, pushing them home.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Admiralty for the beta!


End file.
